Silence of the U.S. Media: 1.8 Million Congolese Women Raped

The Democratic Republic of Congo is a country comparable in size to the United States east of the Mississippi and a country of great beauty, nearly untouched rainforests, exotic animal species, and a good number of valuable minerals and other natural resources.

And yet Congo is today one of the poorest, most violent, most chaotic places on Earth—without medicine, electricity, law, or order. Heartbreakingly, mass rape is rampant, pandemic, and a tactic of both government forces and militias that control large portions of the nation as a result of a prior brutal civil war and its continuing repercussions.

As an Afro-American and African Studies minor at the University of Michigan, I turn to international news outlets—particularly Al Jazeera and the BBC—for the latest happenings in African countries such as the DRC, as the United States media has proven time and again that, where national interest is not at stake, neither is aid nor coverage.

Having been to Rwanda earlier this summer and to the border with the Congo, I had the opportunity to speak with several individuals for whom this situation is a daily reality and fear. As such, I take it upon myself to attempt to explain a highly complex, highly volatile issue and explain it to my peers, the readers of NextGen Journal, as these issues cannot be solved until there is international pressure. And surely international pressure will not happen if the international community is not informed with the ‘goings-on’ of third-world African nations.

According to Al Jazeera, the conflict ultimately began in neighboring Rwanda with the 1994 genocide. The country essentially became a killing field, with troops from six African nations and approximately five million people dead, killed by war and starvation. Eastern DR Congo has been plagued by fighting since 1994, when more than a million ethnic Hutus crossed the border into DR Congo following the genocide in Rwanda, in which some 800,000 people—mostly Tutsi—died. And Rwanda has twice invaded its much larger neighbor, saying it was trying to take action against Hutu rebels based in DR Congo.

Furthermore, the situation in Congo keeps deteriorating even though its current civil war has officially been over for years and the United Nations’ second-largest peacekeeping mission is based there. The international community has largely failed to help Congo achieve peace because of misinformation and, stemming from that, a fundamental misunderstanding of the causes of the violence there. This civil war has been the deadliest conflict since World War II, and the single largest humanitarian crisis in the world. Babies and elderly grandmothers have been raped, as a weapon of war. It is estimated that some two million people have fled their homes—and about 200,000 since April of this year.

Most recently is what is known as the East Democratic Republic of Congo mutiny, fighting that has gone on in North Kivu (an eastern province) since the formal end of the Second Congo War in 2002-2003. In April of this year, soldiers mutinied against the government of the DRC and formed a rebel group known as the March 23 Movement (M23), which is made up of former members of the rebel National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP). In fact, former CNDP commander Bosco Ntaganda, “The Terminator,” is accused of leading the mutiny. These rebels have taken up arms call themselves “M23” after a failed peace agreement signed with DR Congo’s government three years ago, many of whom are ethnic Tutsi—like the vast majority of Rwanda’s leadership.

How does that go under the radar of the international eye? Where is the outcry? Does the world only react where there is oil at stake? These are questions that must be raised, and I hope you will help me raise them.

This is an extraordinarily complex issue, and I look forward to reactions to the piece. Below is a simplified timeline of events in Congo, hopefully to give the situation some shape and perspective.